Hideshi Hino

Hideshi Hino (born April 19, 1946) is a Japanese manga artist who specializes in horror stories. His comics include Hell Baby, Hino Horrors, and Panorama of Hell. He also wrote and directed two entries in the Guinea Pig series of horror films: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), and Mermaid in a Manhole (1988). Hideshi Hino was born in Qiqihar to Japanese immigrant workers in Japanese-occupied Northeast China just when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II to the invading Soviet forces. His family escaped to Japan fearing retribution from Chinese civilians, so his town gathered up everybody and started to make their move to the remaining internationally governed harbours. Hino has claimed that he was nearly killed en route to Japan by his fellow townspeople during the evacuation from China. Some of his manga have been based on his life and its events; for example, his grandfather was a Yakuza and his father used to be a pig farmer with a spider tattoo on his back. Hino has depicted these in his manga many times (as in Panorama of Hell). Although originally considering a job in the film industry, the works of manga artists Shigeru Sugiura and Yoshiharu Tsuge inspired the young Hino to express himself in the medium of manga instead. He originally began in doujinshi, and his first professional work, the short story Tsumetai Ase, was published in Osamu Tezuka's experimental manga magazine COM in 1967. From 1968 on, he published in the alternative manga magazine Garo. With the serialized "Hideshi Hino's Shocking Theater" coming out in 1971, his bizarre world of deviant killers, grotesque beasts, and decaying corpses was firmly established. He found a large following in the world of shojo manga. Works such as Dead Little Girl and Ghost School were prominently featured in shojo magazines. In 2004, Pony Canyon made a series of six live action films, based on his manga, called Hideshi Hino's Theater of Horror. One of Hino's hobbies is maintaining Japanese swords. He is also a practitioner of Budō.